River Water Quality: Who Cares, How Much and Why?

One important motivation for the implementation of the Water Framework Directive is the creation of non-market environmental benefits such as improved ecological quality, or greater opportunities for open-access river recreation via microbial pollution remediation. Pollution sources impacting on ecological or recreational water quality can be uncorrelated but non-market benefits arising from riverine improvements are typically conflated within benefit valuation studies. Using stated preference choice experiments, we seek to disaggregate these sources of value for different river users, thereby allowing decision makers to understand the consequences of adopting alternative investment strategies. Our results suggest anglers derive greater value from improvements to the ecological quality of river water, in contrast to swimmers and rowers for whom greater value is gained from improvements to recreational quality. We also find three distinct groups of respondents: a majority preferring ecological over recreational improvements, a substantial minority holding opposing preference orderings and a small proportion expressing relatively low values for either form of river quality enhancement. As such, this research demonstrates that the non-market benefits which may accrue from different types of water quality improvements are nuanced in terms of their potential beneficiaries and, by inference, their overall value and policy implications.

Valuing Urban Tropical River Recreation Attributes Using Choice Experiments

While providing public access to rivers in urban areas is a first step, maintaining a high quality recreation experience can be expensive. Knowing the economic benefits of high quality recreation may help recreation managers in justifying budget increases and define priorities during a time of scarce resources. To provide that information we have conducted urban river recreation valuation using Choice Experiments (CE). We value user defined recreation attribute improvements for the following: reducing the presence of trash, increasing water clarity, reducing crowds and increasing vegetation. We also tested whether pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors influence visitors’ Willingness to Pay (WTP) for improvements in environmental attributes. Three of the four attribute improvements were statistically significant (marginal values are provided in parenthesis): reduction of trash ($173), improving water clarity ($52), and reducing crowding ($28). The results can help managers justify improved trash removal and littering enforcement strategies, and advocate improvement of water quality by means of enacting and enforcing more strict regulations on littering, off-roading use, gravel pit discharges, and maximum visitation levels.